We welcome applications for membership from anyone in St Ives and the surrounding area who is not in full-time employment. Generally you need to be a paid-up member to attend any Members' Open Meeting, Interest Group or Outing, but non-members who are thinking of joining can attend one Group meeting and one Members' Open meeting as a taster ahead of joining if they wish.

Once you are a member you can join as many groups as you like! For some interest groups there is an additional expense (eg for room hire) and group members share this expense. Similarly, the costs of Outings and Theatre trips are shared among those who book to go.

All our groups and events are member-led, and all our committee members are volunteers, so members are encouraged to contribute as well as to participate. Further details about what it means to be a member can be found in the Application Pack.

Beacon for Members

We use Beacon, an online management system developed by the National u3a, to manage our membership records and to send emails to members. Our financial transactions are also recorded within the system.

It is very important you notify our Membership Secretary if any of your personal details change, especially your email address. If you provided an email address when joining, the monthly magazine/reminder will be sent by email via Beacon, unless requested otherwise.

Only members who have a particular role in our u3a are given access to Beacon. Group organisers are encouraged to use the system to manage their own group records, to check whether members have renewed each year, and to use the email system (which automatically sends messages bcc) for contacting their group.

Hiding your contact details from group leaders

If you would like to ensure that no group leader can see any of your contact details, then please let the Membership Secretary know. Beacon technology allows us to set it so that your group leader is still able to email you, but cannot see what even your email address is.

Click here to show what the group leader would see

On our demo Beacon site, Simone de Beauvoir has opted to hide her details from group leaders, so the group leader of the demo family history group sees the list of members looking like this:-

Receiving Beacon emails

To avoid Beacon emails going to your spam or junk box, we advise you to add the Beacon address (noreply@u3abeacon.org.uk) to your safe sender list.

If you cannot see a safe sender list, or equivalent, in your email settings, you may need to go to your email provider's website and access your account online to change settings there. Another way which sometimes works is to add the Beacon address to your list of contacts or email address book.

Apple devices

Please be aware that Apple devices (i-phones, i-pads etc) sometimes change or modify characters/numbers. To avoid this, please ensure you have turned off Smart Punctuation in Settings - General – keyboard – before entering your address.

Any Queries?